Mother of Reinvention

Fans of exquisite meatless meals take comfort—Mother still loves you! Relaunched in September, the vegetarian eatery offers the same elevated dishes that earned the original version its Michelin Bib Gourmand status before closing in 2020.

The resurrected restaurant features the ownership team of chef Mike Thiemann and his general manager wife Lisa Thiemann, plus well-known local chef Robb Venditti, previously of Mulvaney’s B&L and Pangaea Bier Cafe. (The Thiemanns opened the first Mother downtown in 2014 and its similarly lauded sibling restaurant Empress Tavern the following year, with partners Ryan Donahue, Bob Emerick and Yulya Borroum.

Mother’s revival with this pedigree is the most unlikely Sacramento restaurant story of 2023. Usually, a restaurant shuttering means its distinctive flavors vanish forever, and even if the place reopens, it’s almost always with a different chef or menu. So a chance to revisit Mother’s staples like farro salad and oyster mushroom po’boy feels like a luxury even before stepping into its 2,000-square-feet bigger, more elegant new midtown home. Version 2.0 also invites patrons to come in for a leisurely sitdown dinner, in contrast to the earlier downtown incarnation, which offered counter service and catered in large part to the weekday lunch crowd.

The new spot is “an evolved, grown-up version of Mother,” Mike Thiemann says.

“It’s a nicer part of K Street, so we are just kind of elevating what we do slightly to match the neighborhood,” Lisa Thiemann adds.

Mother might be the piece that finally turns its “nicer” stretch of K Street into the dining destination it has promised to be, in fits and starts, for years now. (The space formerly housed inventive seafood eatery Skool.) On my visit precisely 28 hours after the midtown Mother opened its doors, everything I tried was expertly executed, including chef Thiemann’s chile verde served in a mini cast-iron skillet, a nut burger that pays homage to Greta’s Cafe (a beloved Sacramento institution that sadly shut down in 2000 and became a Chipotle)—both on the O.G. greatest hits list—and Venditti’s bracingly tart yet still somehow smooth lemonade, made with limes as well as lemons.

The new midtown dining room features a large flower-themed mural by area artist Tyson Anthony Roberts.

This remarkable early consistency, which Thiemann credits to “muscle memory,” immediately established Mother 2.0 as a new-old favorite perfectly in tune with neighboring Golden Bear and Tres Hermanas—to the degree that if either was too crowded on a Friday night, you could hop over to Mother and not feel like you missed anything. Especially not the meat.

When it first opened a decade ago, Mother instantly became the place to go for any Sacramento food lover who was not a Ron Swanson-level carnivore. Thiemann, previously executive chef at Ella Dining Room and Bar and chef de cuisine at San Francisco’s Wayfare Tavern, constantly delighted with his “Chef’s 10” mystery tasting menus that proved repeatedly and thoroughly the limitless possibilities of vegetarian cuisine.

Mother closed shortly after the Thiemanns left to turn their attention to a new restaurant, Jim’s Good Food, which opened in midtown, un-fortuitously, in February 2020. Jim’s soon folded, as did Empress (which itself reopened at the beginning of this year, under new ownership).

Mother—the only meat-free restaurant of its culinary caliber in the region—was especially missed. The reaction to a May 2023 post on its Instagram account attests to this: An image of a hand holding keys inside the then-unfinished midtown space, captioned “new digs, same kids,” drew more than 1,200 likes and around 150 excited comments.

“I know Sacramento has been looking for Mother to reopen,” says Venditti, perhaps best known for creating the (non-vegetarian) Pangaea burger that won competitions, topped best-of lists and set the standard for backyard-barbecue-style burgers in local restaurants.

Venditti sold a successful catering business in 2022 and then became executive chef at Mulvaney’s, crossing professional paths with Thiemann briefly when the latter had his own brief stint leading the B&L kitchen this year. The two friends have also long played tennis together.

It was Venditti who hatched the idea for a new Mother and found the midtown space. “I wanted to do something bigger than I was able to take on myself,” Venditti says. “Mike is very creative and comes up with a lot of ideas, and I am more logistical. We kind of round each other out.”

Venditti teamed with Lisa Thiemann on the new space’s look. Lisa—who oversaw the design of the old Mother and Empress Tavern, including selecting the latter’s memorable botanical patterns—followed suit at Mother 2.0 by commissioning a floral mural by Sacramento artist Tyson Anthony Roberts for the dining room, featuring the same teal and gold palette as the eatery’s Eames-style chairs. “Lisa is a vibe surgeon,” Mike says.

The Mother team: Robb Venditti (left), and Mike and Lisa Thiemann

Wooden benches lining the walls further warm the mid-century modern vibe. Near the open kitchen, a graffiti-style mural (Venditti’s idea) reading “Mother Loves You” by another local artist, Leon Willis, evokes Mother 1.0’s punk rock vibe and the musical inclinations of both chef-owners—Thiemann is a rock drummer and Venditti was a turntablist with the 1990s ska band Filibuster.

But the opening menu at the new Mother is all Thiemann’s. “I have a database of hundreds and hundreds of dishes we’ve [previously] done,” he says. And while the initial lineup did not include the “Chef’s 10,”—they were reintroduced in October—my meal was sufficiently nostalgic without it. After having chased the sweet, earthy, slightly caramelized high of a Greta’s Cafe nut burger since the 1990s, I was overjoyed when the chef, who had worked at Greta’s, introduced a similar “carrot nut burger” at Mother 1.0.

He pays more explicit tribute with the “Greta’s nut burger” at the current Mother. It’s the best version yet. A round slab of stretchy provolone bonds a loosely structured patty made from mixed nuts, garlic, carrot, cumin and seasoned chickpea flour. House-made barbecue sauce and pickle complete the signature Thiemann combination of lush and spiky.

The five-ingredient patty follows the chef’s credo of limited ingredients, endless potential. Lab-grown Impossible and Beyond products, which have only gained in popularity since Mother 1.0 closed, are anathema to Thiemann.

“With vegetarian burgers, some people make them with a million ingredients, or they buy them, and they are GMO garbage patties that have science involved,” he says. “We are really focusing on being whole food.”

Fake meat is superfluous anyway when one possesses the craft to produce umami flavor from the char of grilled chilies, tomatillos and green tomato, as Thiemann does with Mother’s hearty chile verde. Potatoes and hominy lend greater depth before fresh radish and cherry tomato toppings add spark.

Agnolotti pasta filled with ricotta and corn, and topped with cotija cheese and radish

I was fortunate to catch Mother—its commitment to seasonal, local ingredients firmly intact—in the waning days of tomato and corn season, the latter starring in the best dish I tried, the “street corn” ravioli-like agnolotti. The pasta wrapper offered a welcome bit of textural resistance before the plunge into a rich ricotta-and-corn center zinged by scallion and lime.

The midtown space’s bigger kitchen allows for a full grill (downtown had a griddle) and a pasta extruder. The two pastas on the menu when I visited soon became four. “We are going to be a low-key pasta house in a way,” Lisa Thiemann says.

The standout element of Mother’s cobb salad was a smear of avocado hugging the inside of the bowl, its simple composition of fruit, olive oil and lemon again highlighting chef Thiemann’s gift for merging fat and acid. Obliging the avocado spread’s entreaty to drag a chunk of baby iceberg right through it resulted in a creamy, crispy, exhilarating bite.

The pimiento Kim-cheese with chilled crudité

Mother will cycle through seasonal ingredients in the cobb, Thiemann says, and in the Kim-Cheese, the wonderfully fresh crudité that accompanies pimiento cheese in a starter that throws back to a similar “snack” at the old Empress, and 1950s cocktail parties before that.

Venditti and the Thiemanns collaborated on a short, regional wine list and a hyperlocal beer list consisting of two Urban Roots and one Bike Dog selection at opening. Mother’s owners aim to obtain a full liquor license, with the hopes of serving cocktails next year.

For now, Mike Thiemann is just glad that the new spot is up and running—a sentiment echoed by a loyal fanbase. “We’re back by popular demand,” he says. “After having a bit of a sabbatical, you realize that this is something we were meant to do.” 

Mother. 2319 K St. mothersacramento.com

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